Ok, I may regret asking this, but what are you doing in that many tabs?
I am seriously curious about this, as I have never had a need to have more than 5 or 6 open at one time, and wonder how you would keep track of what you were doing in all 100.
Actually, we are tied in with a local government who put in fiber and cable, and maintains the routing, so that adds "fun" legal complexities to our mix.
I work for an ISP and my user base is a range from large corporations to grandma. I can't enforce 3 of your 4 suggestions, and the fourth could get me sued for violating someone's first amendment rights if I black-list the wrong IP range.
Non-admin rights are fine to a point. There still can be compromise issues without admin rights. You can still compromise the administrators as well.
Client-side file scanners are and will always be one step behind the bad guys.
Web-side blacklists, while being the best way to block things, still doesn't address the shifting nature of these guys, and opens up new realms of blackmail or DoS attacks.
User training is a great idea, but half of my users barely have the skills to follow simple instructions that involve using the dreaded right mouse button. Seriously, this isn't going to work for me because of the extreme diversity of my userbase.
My conclusion is that malware is never going to go away as long as the rewards outweigh the risks in creating it. In other words, there will always be malware, because risk assessment is based on personal perspective.
If everyone were to switch to a different OS tomorrow, malware authors would still look for and find ways to compromise systems. There are always going to be security holes between the ears of PHBs and other forms of end users and even techs.
As my sig says I am a bit of a pessimist. I am very certain that if we haven't destroyed our civilization in 100 years we will still be 1 step behind malware authors.
What about uninvolved? This goes way beyond "incompetent" all the way to irresponsible. I am about to become a father, and I am going to quit my job and stay home to raise my daughter. My wife and I are going to have to lower our standard of living, but I think that being involved in my daughter's development and life are more important than filling my closet with more stuff I will only use once. Yes, I will have to live in a "less desireable" neighborhood filled with people who don't look like me, think like me or act like me and I won't be buying a Hummer anytime soon, but I know that I won't have to worry about whether I got enough time with my daughter, or if she knows whether her parents love her. Looking at our future, I am convinced that if we don't get more involved with our children we will continue producing detached, borderline sociopathic PHBs.
Note to all people who want the government to legislate YOUR morality: The government cannot force people to be "moral" they can only enforce consequences for breaking social contracts, some of which are based on YOUR "morals", some of which are based on others' "morals". If YOU want YOUR child to adhere to YOUR morals, the government can't do it for YOU, YOU have to raise YOUR child YOURSELF. If YOU abdicate YOUR responsibility to the government, then YOU have no right to ask the government to enforce YOUR point of view/morality/belief system on other people or YOUR child. If YOU want YOUR child to grow up into a responsible adult, YOU have to model responsible adulthood.
It sees you when you're sleeping, it knows when you're awake, it knows if you've been bad or good, so be good or get blackmailed.
Does anything sound like a bad idea to these idiots? I can just see the board room discussion...
CEO: I'm thinking anal probes. CLO: I don't think we're quite there yet, remember you have to work up to this stuff gradually. CTO: We already know everything about their web surfing, let's expand on that. CEO: What do you mean? CTO: Let's build cameras into the converter boxes, this way we can watch them.
As I open my Network Stumbler at my customer's apartment building, there are 22 unsecured wireless networks named linksys all broadcasting on channel 6. Most computers will automatically connect to a network with the same name as one previously connected to, especially if it is on the same channel, so intentional will be extroardinarily difficult to prove with unsecured networks.
This is a law that will be extremely difficult to enforce even if the connection is secured and has been hacked. Especially given the technical expertise of the average beat cop. This would result in MD police departments having to hire technicians who have the expertise to know if a crime is committed. Is the state going to give local PDs the kind of additional funding they will need to enforce this?.......Deep breath...... okay stop lauging and type....... Hahahahahahahaha. Sorry, couldn't ask that question and keep a straight face. It would also require logs from the routers to be stored by owners to prove that a "crime" took place. Good luck getting Grandma who just "turned on and it worked" to even know what logs are, let alone figure out how to store them.
My guess is that they will try to put the onus on the ISPs, which will cost more than the smaller ISPs can afford to pay, and viola....less competition for the big boys. That is just the stuff off the top of my head that is wrong with this idea, I could probably rant about this for days. My guess is that if you look at the guy who sponsored this bill you would see that his campaign fund gets a lot of bri...ahem "contributions" from telecom and cable companies.
After installing the service pack certain things are incredibly faster. 1) startup: Before installing the service pack it took my computer (Hell laptop with 1.6ghz dual core AMD processor, 4GB RAM) 20 minutes to become usable. Now I can use my computer within 2 minutes of logging in to my domain. It seems like the indexing that happens actually runs in the backgroung and doesn't interfere with apps that you want to run in the foreground. 2) Browsing the domain network. Before installing the service pack, I could double-click on Network and watch the green bar slowly crawl across the top until finally after 5 minutes computers would appear. Now it is instantaneous. 3) Outlook 07 (probably related to the indexing changes). Before installing the service pack it took 5 minutes for Outlook to become usable and half the time it would tell me the local file closed incorrectly and it would now "repair" the file. Now Outlook takes abetween 20 and 40 seconds to be usable and downloading e-mail is much quicker. I haven't gotten the Incorrect file closure message yet either, and I have been opening and closing Outlook all day.
The new remote desktop removed the stupid login window.
The only thing I need to check on is if you still can't change IP settings when you first sign on. It used to take 5 minutes to be able to change IP settings.
The only complaint I have is that installing the Service Pack took alittle over 4 hours.
I, too live in Tacoma, WA. I can get a 1.5MB internet connection for $29.95 including taxes,etc. and I can walk into the LOCALLY OWNED ISP's office and talk to real techs. The city laid the cable and maintains it, and wholesales it to three ISPs who compete on pricing and supporting end users. Scumcast and Qworst have been trying unsuccessfully to sink this venture, but so far our politicians haven't sold us out. Personally I think Comcast should be broken up like the bells were. The more competition there is, the better our prices and customer service should be.
Enjoy the curb Comcast, because that's what I've kicked you to.
"Addiction to Internet communication? That's a little tougher, but I'd view that more as low self esteem/insecurity - i.e. constantly needing to feel "connected". I'd bet these folks are the same ones used to who spend hours on the phone with their friends. Addiction? Hardly"
I agree, however I wouldn't go as far as low self-esteem or insecurity. I think that plain old loneliness is more accurate. The need to be in contact with other human beings is hard wired into us. At our core we feel the need to belong to a group/tribe. The geek tribe set up methods of communication that enable us to form the much needed connections that weren't geographically available to us as a sub-culture. I would say that our use of the internet is fundamentally healthy when we use it to link with others of our tribe and become less lonely.
I would guess that most of us who would be classified as "addicts" are actually healthier mentally than the yutzes who came up with this idea. It seems that these folks have a more "traditional" concept of interaction that is based on the past paradigms. These guys probably railed against the phone as well simply because it didn't fit into their world view.
The reality is that by coming up with "new" mental illnesses, we are moving attention away from real mental illnesses that require attention and are diluting the pool of resources available for the support of people with mental illness.
I work for an ISP in the US, and I find this to be hilarious! 70%! Bull--oney! I have told customers about cease and desist letters our ISP received, and the response that I have gotten universally has been: So what?
Maybe in a less independantly minded country 70% is the case, but on this side of the pond the best response you will get is laughter.
Whoever posted this article, thanks for a much needed laugh.
I have a Vista laptop from Dell, provided by my work, with a 3 Ghz processor and 4GB of Ram, and this thing runs incredibly slower than my XP at home with a 1.8Ghz processor with 1GB of RAM. It takes 5 minutes to boot up, and when "idle" uses more resources then my XP at a full load. The virtual machine that I set up with XP runs faster on my vista machine then Vista does! And I limited it to 512MB of ram and 10% of processor! If any MS shill is watching this thread, please explain this phenomenon to me. Then give me an XP license.
Actually, It is a lot more than a warning about being a hypocrite. It is a warning against passing judgement. While I agree that it is OK to tell people that something is morally wrong and even to attempt to dissuade them from committing an action that we perceive is morally wrong, we are not God's police force. God is perfectly capable of enforcing his law and needs absolutely no help from us.
Actually you show a fundamental lack of understanding of a point of view that isn't yours. So, lets talk about cycles of violence. Violent action A causes retaliatory violent action B which causes retaliatory violent action C Lather, rinse, repeat. What some of us try to follow is Violent action A is not retaliated against in a violent manner, giving the receiver of the violent action the moral high ground because they have declined to participate in the negative activity. This does not mean that the original initiator of violent action does not attempt further violent action, or that the receiver of violent action sticks around for further abuse, but that the long term cycle of violence is ended.
Now, let's go a little deeper. There are different kinds of violence. Verbal and emotional violence are also weapons used by most of us. Look at any Slashdot thread for countless examples. Including unfortunately your post. There is no need to disparage someone's character simply because you happen to disagree with their choice of religion or their belief that non-violent means are preferable to violent ones to resolve disputes. Please try to be careful with your generalizations. What you are saying about Muslims today could easily be said about any people group at various points in their history.
You may be a simple troll, but I think that you may actually believe that your way of thought is superior to others'. I hope that your future lessons in humility do not debilitate you and that you can find peace.
We only block when there is confirmed viral/botnet/spamming activity. We don't block ports, we just shut you down. These things are in our terms of service, which we give you a 1 page hard copy of when you sign up, so if you don't like it there are other options out there. Why block ports when they are so easily changed? We don't care what ports you use for legit business purposes, but once your ip becomes a threat, you will be blocked. You will also receive a phone call explaining EXACTLY why you are blocked. I understand your frustration, but don't take it out on people who aren't responsible for it. You will only be greeted with at best sarcasm and at worst derision. Especially with this crowd.
Net-Venture in Tacoma http://www.nventure.com/ is the ISP I work for. I really try not to comment advertise as I think that is not very appropriate, but you are putting me on the spot, so...
Ok, I work for an ISP and our customers do get temporarily locked down if they are spewing infection or spam to the universe. When they call in, we tell them exactly what kind of Spam or virus, or botnet they are currently spewing. On the first offence you get asked to scan your machines with AdAware, Spybot and AVG until it runs clean and then to call us when that happens for us to reactivate their connection so they can send us screenshots of the successful removal scans. If the abov scenario happens three times we require them to either format and reinstall their OS or have their pc certified clean by a reputable tech shop (of which we have a list) or by our technicians, we charge significantly LESS then the others around us, or ask them if they have an unsecured wireless network, and if so ask them to disconnect it until they turn the security on. We will set that up for them for a fee, and most of our customers are pretty OK with paying for technical services. I guess that we are lucky, but we also are pretty good at training our customers as well.
Some of us ISPs do care about our customers, and do our best to be good net-neighbors.
From the Kent v. Dulles case in 1957, around the McCarthy era, at the Supreme Court, Justice William O. Douglas' wrote for the court: "The right to travel is a part of the 'liberty' of which the citizen cannot be deprived without due process of law under the Fifth Amendment. If that "liberty" is to be regulated, it must be pursuant to the law-making functions of the Congress. . . . . Freedom of movement across frontiers in either direction, and inside frontiers as well, was a part of our heritage. Travel abroad, like travel within the country, . . . may be as close to the heart of the individual as the choice of what he eats, or wears, or reads. Freedom of movement is basic in our scheme of values." If we cannot see the "watch lists", then there is no way for us to challenge our presence on such a list. That in my opinion is taking away someone's right to travel without due process.
Re:Maybe there's a silver lining here...
on
Storm Worm Rising
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I work for a small ISP in Tacoma, WA. We tried selling a cleanup disk. It didn't work because a $9.95 disk cost us 1 hour of phone support per computer on average. The reality is that most of our customers who get infected aren't technically savvy enough to install and run anti-malware software. We now have a flat-rate tech bench fee of $89 to clean up the computer. We still lose money on the deal, but not as much. What technically minded people in general forget is that most users want their security solution to "just work" with as little contact from the end user as possible. If I were to ask my customers when their AV expires, the answer I would get would be either "I don't know." or "I think I saw a little window pop-up saying something about that." or my favorite "I got rid of that cause it was making my computer run slow." Now, to speak to the first part of your post, I can guarantee you that there will not be a DDOS against the big sites who have lobbyists. You may ask why, and here is my reasoning: 1)Worms are used primarily for making money. 2)Actions that threaten revenue streams are bad. 3)People with lobbyists can threaten a botnet owner's revenue stream. 4)Because of that a botnet owner will avoid attacking people who can threaten their revenue stream. Even though it is an illegal business, it is still a business, so will do whatever it deems neccesary to ensure its profit.
Keep that laptop off your lap. http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,118884-page,1/ar ticle.html Laptops may be the perfect gift for those id10t users who should have a little chlorine thrown in their gene pool. However until they fix the Darwin Award Winner generation issue, I think the popularity of laptops will be... muted.
The other issue is the ergonomic nightmare that is the modern laptop. http://web.mit.edu/atic/www/disabilities/rsi/lapto pergo.html Add-on devices for ergonomics defeat the portability purpose of laptops, so with increased laptop use there will be increased RSI and soon the laptop surge will lead to the "Coming Dominance of the Desktop PC" articles.
That's my take on this article.
"I guess I'm on the side that certain words are bad in their own right."
In your cultural context I am sure that that is an accurate statement. In the cultural context I grew up in (Far Rockaway, Queens) that would be a laughable statement. It is interesting to me that it is the expletives of the "lower" class that are "bad" while the expletives of the upper class are considered okay. I agree with the other posters that intent is important, but cultural context is more important. If I was in your neighborhood/church/synagogue/mosque/grocery store, I would consider the cultural context I was in before using "vulgar", as defined by the culture whose turf I was on, language, or speaking at all. That is what I teach the children in my church. Respect the customs of where you are, but don't confuse cultural right and wrong with moral or biblical right and wrong.
"Surely pervasive Wifi is the issue here, like meshes and things?"
Actually, not just money is the problem with Wifi. I live in Washington state. I support a wifi ISP on the East side of the state. It's pretty flat and no trees around and we still have interference issues from cordless phones and the customer's own access points. (I didn't design the network, I just support it.) It still works pretty well.
On the west side of the state a couple of municipalities have learned that trees (of which there are many out here) block wifi signals. You might ask why. Trees are full of water, water absorbs radio signals in the 2.4Ghz range. That incidentally is how your microwave works. So yes, your microwave can interfere with your wireless network if it is improperly shielded.
For the above technical reasons, pervasive Wifi is not practical without a change in the direction of the technology.
My 2 cents from experience.
It happened to me too. It does not happen on every update for IE I run, this was the first time it happened to me.
So, no the parent was not lying, and I won't mention the server 2003 these patches took out at one of my client's sites. I tell people and I tell people don't apply security patches from MS for 1 week. That is usually enough time to tell if they are breaking things. But do they listen to me ARRRRRRRRRRGH!
Ah well, if my customers listened to my advice I wouldn't have any job security.
Lovely flame war everyone, my marshmallows are toasted now so see you later.
Slashdot Mirror
50 + tabs, 100 +???
Ok, I may regret asking this, but what are you doing in that many tabs?
I am seriously curious about this, as I have never had a need to have more than 5 or 6 open at one time, and wonder how you would keep track of what you were doing in all 100.
Actually, we are tied in with a local government who put in fiber and cable, and maintains the routing, so that adds "fun" legal complexities to our mix.
I work for an ISP and my user base is a range from large corporations to grandma. I can't enforce 3 of your 4 suggestions, and the fourth could get me sued for violating someone's first amendment rights if I black-list the wrong IP range.
Non-admin rights are fine to a point. There still can be compromise issues without admin rights. You can still compromise the administrators as well.
Client-side file scanners are and will always be one step behind the bad guys.
Web-side blacklists, while being the best way to block things, still doesn't address the shifting nature of these guys, and opens up new realms of blackmail or DoS attacks.
User training is a great idea, but half of my users barely have the skills to follow simple instructions that involve using the dreaded right mouse button. Seriously, this isn't going to work for me because of the extreme diversity of my userbase.
My conclusion is that malware is never going to go away as long as the rewards outweigh the risks in creating it. In other words, there will always be malware, because risk assessment is based on personal perspective.
If everyone were to switch to a different OS tomorrow, malware authors would still look for and find ways to compromise systems. There are always going to be security holes between the ears of PHBs and other forms of end users and even techs.
As my sig says I am a bit of a pessimist. I am very certain that if we haven't destroyed our civilization in 100 years we will still be 1 step behind malware authors.
What about uninvolved? This goes way beyond "incompetent" all the way to irresponsible.
I am about to become a father, and I am going to quit my job and stay home to raise my daughter. My wife and I are going to have to lower our standard of living, but I think that being involved in my daughter's development and life are more important than filling my closet with more stuff I will only use once. Yes, I will have to live in a "less desireable" neighborhood filled with people who don't look like me, think like me or act like me and I won't be buying a Hummer anytime soon, but I know that I won't have to worry about whether I got enough time with my daughter, or if she knows whether her parents love her.
Looking at our future, I am convinced that if we don't get more involved with our children we will continue producing detached, borderline sociopathic PHBs.
Note to all people who want the government to legislate YOUR morality: The government cannot force people to be "moral" they can only enforce consequences for breaking social contracts, some of which are based on YOUR "morals", some of which are based on others' "morals". If YOU want YOUR child to adhere to YOUR morals, the government can't do it for YOU, YOU have to raise YOUR child YOURSELF. If YOU abdicate YOUR responsibility to the government, then YOU have no right to ask the government to enforce YOUR point of view/morality/belief system on other people or YOUR child. If YOU want YOUR child to grow up into a responsible adult, YOU have to model responsible adulthood.
It sees you when you're sleeping, it knows when you're awake, it knows if you've been bad or good, so be good or get blackmailed.
Does anything sound like a bad idea to these idiots? I can just see the board room discussion...
CEO: I'm thinking anal probes.
CLO: I don't think we're quite there yet, remember you have to work up to this stuff gradually.
CTO: We already know everything about their web surfing, let's expand on that.
CEO: What do you mean?
CTO: Let's build cameras into the converter boxes, this way we can watch them.
As I open my Network Stumbler at my customer's apartment building, there are 22 unsecured wireless networks named linksys all broadcasting on channel 6. Most computers will automatically connect to a network with the same name as one previously connected to, especially if it is on the same channel, so intentional will be extroardinarily difficult to prove with unsecured networks.
.......Deep breath...... okay stop lauging and type....... Hahahahahahahaha. Sorry, couldn't ask that question and keep a straight face.
....less competition for the big boys. That is just the stuff off the top of my head that is wrong with this idea, I could probably rant about this for days. My guess is that if you look at the guy who sponsored this bill you would see that his campaign fund gets a lot of bri...ahem "contributions" from telecom and cable companies.
This is a law that will be extremely difficult to enforce even if the connection is secured and has been hacked. Especially given the technical expertise of the average beat cop. This would result in MD police departments having to
hire technicians who have the expertise to know if a crime is committed. Is the state going to give local PDs the kind of additional funding they will need to enforce this?
It would also require logs from the routers to be stored by owners to prove that a "crime" took place. Good luck getting Grandma who just "turned on and it worked" to even know what logs are, let alone figure out how to store them.
My guess is that they will try to put the onus on the ISPs, which will cost more than the smaller ISPs can afford to pay, and viola
I find nothing "wrong" with the statements. Sarcastic .....nyeah could be Doc could be, wrong no.
The rate my ISP charges for a 6MB connection is $39.95 including taxes and fees.
but the OS actually works now.
After installing the service pack certain things are incredibly faster.
1) startup: Before installing the service pack it took my computer (Hell laptop with 1.6ghz dual core AMD processor, 4GB RAM) 20 minutes to become usable. Now I can use my computer within 2 minutes of logging in to my domain. It seems like the indexing that happens actually runs in the backgroung and doesn't interfere with apps that you want to run in the foreground.
2) Browsing the domain network. Before installing the service pack, I could double-click on Network and watch the green bar slowly crawl across the top until finally after 5 minutes computers would appear. Now it is instantaneous.
3) Outlook 07 (probably related to the indexing changes). Before installing the service pack it took 5 minutes for Outlook to become usable and half the time it would tell me the local file closed incorrectly and it would now "repair" the file. Now Outlook takes abetween 20 and 40 seconds to be usable and downloading e-mail is much quicker. I haven't gotten the Incorrect file closure message yet either, and I have been opening and closing Outlook all day.
The new remote desktop removed the stupid login window.
The only thing I need to check on is if you still can't change IP settings when you first sign on. It used to take 5 minutes to be able to change IP settings.
The only complaint I have is that installing the Service Pack took alittle over 4 hours.
I, too live in Tacoma, WA. I can get a 1.5MB internet connection for $29.95 including taxes,etc. and I can walk into the LOCALLY OWNED ISP's office and talk to real techs. The city laid the cable and maintains it, and wholesales it to three ISPs who compete on pricing and supporting end users.
Scumcast and Qworst have been trying unsuccessfully to sink this venture, but so far our politicians haven't sold us out.
Personally I think Comcast should be broken up like the bells were. The more competition there is, the better our prices and customer service should be.
Enjoy the curb Comcast, because that's what I've kicked you to.
"Addiction to Internet communication? That's a little tougher, but I'd view that more as low self esteem/insecurity - i.e. constantly needing to feel "connected". I'd bet these folks are the same ones used to who spend hours on the phone with their friends. Addiction? Hardly"
I agree, however I wouldn't go as far as low self-esteem or insecurity. I think that plain old loneliness is more accurate. The need to be in contact with other human beings is hard wired into us. At our core we feel the need to belong to a group/tribe. The geek tribe set up methods of communication that enable us to form the much needed connections that weren't geographically available to us as a sub-culture. I would say that our use of the internet is fundamentally healthy when we use it to link with others of our tribe and become less lonely.
I would guess that most of us who would be classified as "addicts" are actually healthier mentally than the yutzes who came up with this idea. It seems that these folks have a more "traditional" concept of interaction that is based on the past paradigms. These guys probably railed against the phone as well simply because it didn't fit into their world view.
The reality is that by coming up with "new" mental illnesses, we are moving attention away from real mental illnesses that require attention and are diluting the pool of resources available for the support of people with mental illness.
I work for an ISP in the US, and I find this to be hilarious! 70%! Bull--oney! I have told customers about cease and desist letters our ISP received, and the response that I have gotten universally has been: So what?
Maybe in a less independantly minded country 70% is the case, but on this side of the pond the best response you will get is laughter.
Whoever posted this article, thanks for a much needed laugh.
I have a Vista laptop from Dell, provided by my work, with a 3 Ghz processor and 4GB of Ram, and this thing runs incredibly slower than my XP at home with a 1.8Ghz processor with 1GB of RAM. It takes 5 minutes to boot up, and when "idle" uses more resources then my XP at a full load. The virtual machine that I set up with XP runs faster on my vista machine then Vista does! And I limited it to 512MB of ram and 10% of processor! If any MS shill is watching this thread, please explain this phenomenon to me. Then give me an XP license.
Actually, It is a lot more than a warning about being a hypocrite. It is a warning against passing judgement. While I agree that it is OK to tell people that something is morally wrong and even to attempt to dissuade them from committing an action that we perceive is morally wrong, we are not God's police force. God is perfectly capable of enforcing his law and needs absolutely no help from us.
Actually you show a fundamental lack of understanding of a point of view that isn't yours. So, lets talk about cycles of violence. Violent action A causes retaliatory violent action B which causes retaliatory violent action C Lather, rinse, repeat. What some of us try to follow is Violent action A is not retaliated against in a violent manner, giving the receiver of the violent action the moral high ground because they have declined to participate in the negative activity. This does not mean that the original initiator of violent action does not attempt further violent action, or that the receiver of violent action sticks around for further abuse, but that the long term cycle of violence is ended.
Now, let's go a little deeper. There are different kinds of violence. Verbal and emotional violence are also weapons used by most of us. Look at any Slashdot thread for countless examples. Including unfortunately your post. There is no need to disparage someone's character simply because you happen to disagree with their choice of religion or their belief that non-violent means are preferable to violent ones to resolve disputes. Please try to be careful with your generalizations. What you are saying about Muslims today could easily be said about any people group at various points in their history.
You may be a simple troll, but I think that you may actually believe that your way of thought is superior to others'. I hope that your future lessons in humility do not debilitate you and that you can find peace.
Yours,
Pastor Gil
Just send it to our abuse@ address and we will get right on it. Please send copies of log entries etc. so we know what we are dealing with.
We only block when there is confirmed viral/botnet/spamming activity. We don't block ports, we just shut you down. These things are in our terms of service, which we give you a 1 page hard copy of when you sign up, so if you don't like it there are other options out there. Why block ports when they are so easily changed? We don't care what ports you use for legit business purposes, but once your ip becomes a threat, you will be blocked. You will also receive a phone call explaining EXACTLY why you are blocked. I understand your frustration, but don't take it out on people who aren't responsible for it. You will only be greeted with at best sarcasm and at worst derision. Especially with this crowd.
Net-Venture in Tacoma http://www.nventure.com/ is the ISP I work for. I really try not to comment advertise as I think that is not very appropriate, but you are putting me on the spot, so...
Ok, I work for an ISP and our customers do get temporarily locked down if they are spewing infection or spam to the universe. When they call in, we tell them exactly what kind of Spam or virus, or botnet they are currently spewing. On the first offence you get asked to scan your machines with AdAware, Spybot and AVG until it runs clean and then to call us when that happens for us to reactivate their connection so they can send us screenshots of the successful removal scans. If the abov scenario happens three times we require them to either format and reinstall their OS or have their pc certified clean by a reputable tech shop (of which we have a list) or by our technicians, we charge significantly LESS then the others around us, or ask them if they have an unsecured wireless network, and if so ask them to disconnect it until they turn the security on. We will set that up for them for a fee, and most of our customers are pretty OK with paying for technical services. I guess that we are lucky, but we also are pretty good at training our customers as well. Some of us ISPs do care about our customers, and do our best to be good net-neighbors.
From the Kent v. Dulles case in 1957, around the McCarthy era, at the Supreme Court, Justice William O. Douglas' wrote for the court:
"The right to travel is a part of the 'liberty' of which the citizen cannot be deprived without due process of law under the Fifth Amendment. If that "liberty" is to be regulated, it must be pursuant to the law-making functions of the Congress. . . . . Freedom of movement across frontiers in either direction, and inside frontiers as well, was a part of our heritage. Travel abroad, like travel within the country, . . . may be as close to the heart of the individual as the choice of what he eats, or wears, or reads. Freedom of movement is basic in our scheme of values."
If we cannot see the "watch lists", then there is no way for us to challenge our presence on such a list. That in my opinion is taking away someone's right to travel without due process.
I work for a small ISP in Tacoma, WA. We tried selling a cleanup disk. It didn't work because a $9.95 disk cost us 1 hour of phone support per computer on average. The reality is that most of our customers who get infected aren't technically savvy enough to install and run anti-malware software. We now have a flat-rate tech bench fee of $89 to clean up the computer. We still lose money on the deal, but not as much.
What technically minded people in general forget is that most users want their security solution to "just work" with as little contact from the end user as possible. If I were to ask my customers when their AV expires, the answer I would get would be either "I don't know." or "I think I saw a little window pop-up saying something about that." or my favorite "I got rid of that cause it was making my computer run slow."
Now, to speak to the first part of your post, I can guarantee you that there will not be a DDOS against the big sites who have lobbyists. You may ask why, and here is my reasoning:
1)Worms are used primarily for making money.
2)Actions that threaten revenue streams are bad.
3)People with lobbyists can threaten a botnet owner's revenue stream.
4)Because of that a botnet owner will avoid attacking people who can threaten their revenue stream.
Even though it is an illegal business, it is still a business, so will do whatever it deems neccesary to ensure its profit.
Keep that laptop off your lap. http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,118884-page,1/ar ticle.html Laptops may be the perfect gift for those id10t users who should have a little chlorine thrown in their gene pool. However until they fix the Darwin Award Winner generation issue, I think the popularity of laptops will be... muted.
The other issue is the ergonomic nightmare that is the modern laptop. http://web.mit.edu/atic/www/disabilities/rsi/lapto pergo.html Add-on devices for ergonomics defeat the portability purpose of laptops, so with increased laptop use there will be increased RSI and soon the laptop surge will lead to the "Coming Dominance of the Desktop PC" articles.
That's my take on this article.
"I guess I'm on the side that certain words are bad in their own right." In your cultural context I am sure that that is an accurate statement. In the cultural context I grew up in (Far Rockaway, Queens) that would be a laughable statement. It is interesting to me that it is the expletives of the "lower" class that are "bad" while the expletives of the upper class are considered okay. I agree with the other posters that intent is important, but cultural context is more important. If I was in your neighborhood/church/synagogue/mosque/grocery store, I would consider the cultural context I was in before using "vulgar", as defined by the culture whose turf I was on, language, or speaking at all. That is what I teach the children in my church. Respect the customs of where you are, but don't confuse cultural right and wrong with moral or biblical right and wrong.
"Surely pervasive Wifi is the issue here, like meshes and things?" Actually, not just money is the problem with Wifi. I live in Washington state. I support a wifi ISP on the East side of the state. It's pretty flat and no trees around and we still have interference issues from cordless phones and the customer's own access points. (I didn't design the network, I just support it.) It still works pretty well. On the west side of the state a couple of municipalities have learned that trees (of which there are many out here) block wifi signals. You might ask why. Trees are full of water, water absorbs radio signals in the 2.4Ghz range. That incidentally is how your microwave works. So yes, your microwave can interfere with your wireless network if it is improperly shielded. For the above technical reasons, pervasive Wifi is not practical without a change in the direction of the technology. My 2 cents from experience.
It happened to me too. It does not happen on every update for IE I run, this was the first time it happened to me.
So, no the parent was not lying, and I won't mention the server 2003 these patches took out at one of my client's sites.
I tell people and I tell people don't apply security patches from MS for 1 week. That is usually enough time to tell if they are breaking things. But do they listen to me ARRRRRRRRRRGH!
Ah well, if my customers listened to my advice I wouldn't have any job security.
Lovely flame war everyone, my marshmallows are toasted now so see you later.